Some people say that studying history can be likened to looking at Versailles through a keyhole. Some parts seem clear to us, but some are fragmented, opaque, and difficult to decipher, while others are completely invisible and the truth becomes out of reach.
Although it has its origins in the study of the ancient world, this metaphor is particularly appropriate for a more modern institution that is embedded in a contemporaneous culture: The United States Central Intelligence Agency .
Intelligence remains a topic of much popular information and journalism, with a growing number of memoirs exposing this mysterious agency. Over the years, scholarship on the subject has risen steadily on both sides of the Atlantic, with scholars building an impressive body of scholarship that continues to explore: Intelligence Services, Intelligence Leaders, Covert Operations, Intelligence Collection and Analysis, and Intelligence Ethics.
The authors argue that, in fact, a disproportionate share of the output of the "Anglosphere" is concentrated on the United States and the CIA, however, certain omissions and blind spots remain.
While the study of intelligence presents historians with a unique set of challenges, their application of oral history to intelligence agencies adds another layer of methodological and epistemological complexity that must be carefully negotiated.
Although oral history interviews present obstacles for researchers studying the history of intelligence, they focus on the CIA. While intelligence history and oral history each harbor metatheoretical dangers and biases, when they are combined, their relationship may actually be a productive and generative one.
To be sure, this analysis comes from a wider intellectual context, where history and politics are traditionally conceived of as being about states, government apparatuses, written records left by elites, and "great men."
As Paul Thompson writes in his seminal book The Voice of the Past: Oral History As noted in History: "The power structure itself is a great recording machine, shaping the past in its own image."
There were "top-down" movements on both sides of the Atlantic, and E.P. Thompson sought to bring to While the history of intelligence derives largely from a "top-down" tradition, much academic oral history derives from this "historical bottom-up" approach and attempts to give a voice to large groups of people who have hitherto been ignored, such as women, ethnic minorities, the working class, and the poor.
Intelligence history is informed by the history of politics and diplomacy and the relationship between governmental elites, while oral history is informed by the history of social labor and the relationship between state power. The former is driven by the elusiveness of the written word, the latter by the multitude of ignored voices. The former seeks epistemic transcendence in insider documents, while the latter seeks in the voices of outsiders.
The author believes: can draw on the most advanced debates in oral history and intelligence history. As the British Parliament and the US Senate Oral History Project make clear, oral history has never been the exclusive preserve of those "hidden outside history".
The CIA also has its own oral history program. Nonetheless, many "top-down" campaigns view oral history largely as a more "scientific" means of documentation, a softer supplementary light source that brings the diffuse area around the keyhole into relatively sharper focus.
In other words, oral histories are a "great tape recorder," and indeed, in some ways, they are simply a testament to their obfuscation. Particularly narrow and fact-focused readings of oral history are "added to and stirred up" into a set of pre-existing ideas around what constitutes "good research" - an approach that preserves a highly restricted notion of what types of questions can legitimately be asked and what types of answers can legitimately be given.
This is especially true when it comes to questions of identity and culture and when considering issues of meaning, memory and narrative.
As Alessandro Portelli, one of the most important theorists and practitioners in the field As Portelli points out in "The Special Characteristics of Oral History," "Subjectivity is as much the enterprise of history as the more obvious 'facts.'
What the informants believe is indeed a historical fact, as is what "really" happened. This, of course, should be emphasized at the outset. This is not to say that facts are unimportant, or that they do not exist, but that history contains more than them.
In a somewhat different context, permission is given to quote DCI Director and history buff Bill Casey. Casey emphasized this point in a 1981 lecture the same year as Portelli's paper: "Facts can be confused... just as a house is made of a pile of stones... a pile of stones is not a house.
Author's point of view: All of this provides us with a more comprehensive and broader picture of the intelligent world, or to reiterate this through the metaphor we started with, it allows us to peek into more keyholes.
Historians who wish to turn their attention to the field of intelligence history face many problems.
The Struggle for Freedom: Afghanistan and U.S. Foreign Policy examines the CIA's role in U.S. foreign policy toward the country since the Carter administration, particularly since the Soviet invasion of the country on Christmas Day 1979.
Carter described the incident in his January 1980 State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress as a "radical and radical new step" that "may pose the most serious threat to peace since World War II."
Privately, he outlined this clearly in a letter to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher : "Because the West has a broad stake in the region's stability and oil flows in general, the challenges to our common and critical interests in the region are unprecedented."
On the other hand, former President Nigeria Kerson was less cautious and prosaic, telling readers in "The Real War" published shortly after the invasion: "We woke up to the fact that a region once known primarily for romantic fantasy held the fate of the world in its hands." Brzezinski (1977-81) noted, "Essentially, this was the first time during the entire Cold War that the Soviet Union had openly used military force to effect a major geopolitical change, and to do so in an area involving vital U.S. interests." On the back of the Church and Pike Commission investigations in the mid-1970s, Carter came into office promising to control and clean up the CIA.
Carter's CIA director Stansfield Turner "From top to bottom, except for Brzezinski came to Washington with suspicion and distrust of the CIA.
Carter's running mate Walter Mondale had been a member of the Church Council, deputy national security adviser David Aaron and Brzezinski's executive assistant Karl Indervers Inderfurth also served on the committee's staff.
Meanwhile, Turner himself was "deeply hostile and disgusted by many within and outside the CIA and intelligence community," according to Robert Gates.
While the commentary and historiography surrounding the Carter administration and its successor Reagan are highly politicized and debate and controversy will continue for years to come, Gates also noted that despite the above, contrary to "conventional wisdom, the Carter administration turned to the CIA for covert operations almost from the outset."
Thus, over the course of his administration, Carter's disconnect between his public and private positions on the CIA was arguably increasingly consistent, despite complaints that "with what security do we conduct even the most routine covert activities when the law requires eight committees, some 180 members of Congress, and nearly as many staff members to be informed in advance?" New York Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan Moynihan also said approvingly, "Carter now discovered that this was his CIA!"
In fact, the author believes that as the administration continued, "Carter became increasingly dependent on the CIA and covert operations."
The most prominent example of a covert operation during Carter's presidency, and indeed in CIA history, was Afghanistan Operation Tornado, the CIA's code name for delivering funds and supplies to the mujahideen during the final stages of the Cold War, continued under Reagan and became the longest and largest covert operation in CIA history.
In fact, readers will be surprised by the breadth and depth of the connections between the CIA, Afghanistan, and U.S. foreign policy. As the focus of another related research paper, suffice it to say that if Afghanistan is woven into the mythology surrounding the end of the Cold War, it is closely tied to the gestation, birth and life cycle of the Global War on Terror.
Let us not forget that the war in Afghanistan went on to supplant Vietnam as the longest war in history under George W. Bush and Obama .
However, taking this case as an example, what problems do we face when studying the history of intelligence?
First, let's consider a sample of some of the titles of related books in the secondary literature that a library search might lead you to: Christopher Andrew's For the President's Eyes Only, The Arch Enemy: The CIA and the KGB "The Inside Story of the Final Showdown," Executive Secrets: Covert Ops and the Presidency, by William Dougherty; excerpted from "Shadows: The Ultimate Inside Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War," by Robert Gates; "The CIA at War: The Covert Campaign against Terrorism," by Ronald Kessler.
With terms like "ghost" and "shadow," it's immediately obvious that we're dealing with a secret netherworld where things are not as they seem.
This is a world of "secrets" and "secrets", "secret histories", "secret battles", "secret wars", a world where information is limited to those "on the inside" who may or may not think it's information they can tell and, more importantly, tell us, although we can of course try to infiltrate the world in other ways.
In fact the author believes that "insiderism" is, for want of a better word, one of its defining characteristics, certainly taking the sacrosanct phrase "for the eyes of the president only" to its logical limit.
Popular cultural products in the intellectual world also draw us into the type of space in which these institutions operate, a space that is not entirely limited to the cultural imagination; for example, in 2008 alone, the following films were released: Body of Lies, Burn after Reading, and Only the Truth.
Or, more specifically, consider some other books on intelligence, such as: The Hidden Hand: British, American, and Cold War Secret Intelligence by Richard J. Aldrich; The Gatekeepers: Memoirs of a CIA Polygraph Detector by George A. Deadly Deception: My Twenty-Five Years in the CIA, edited by Christopher Andrew and David Dierks.
This is emphasized by terms such as "hidden," "mysterious," "brainwashed," "game," "secret," "betrayal," and "gatekeeper," as well as phrases such as "missing dimension," "fatal deception," and "look over my shoulder."
Of course, some of this can be put down to overzealous publishers, editors, and authors keen to move copies of their respective books. Nonetheless, while this may be a necessary condition when considering how these titles should be named, it is by no means sufficient.
The fact that these titles are considered more marketable and attractive to their respective audiences, peeking behind the scenes, through the forbidden keyhole, is an interesting perspective in itself.
However, the author believes that above all, we must consider the nature of these institutions.
For example, the CIA defines its "mission" as: "Preemptive action by gathering critical intelligence, conducting objective all-source analysis, conducting effective covert operations as directed by the President, and protecting secrets that help protect our national security." The mission of the National Clandestine Service (NCS) is to enhance national security and foreign policy objectives through the covert collection of human intelligence (HUMINT) and covert operations.
So the life and well-being of the nation is intertwined with the agency's ability to obtain information and secrets and protect itself, and at this point it should be said that the CIA is actually relatively open when considered alongside other intelligence services.
Former CIA Director John McCone (1961-5), who oversaw the CIA during particularly noteworthy periods including the Cuban Missile Crisis, complained to Casey in 1984, for example:
It is of great interest to me that of the thirty-five countries that maintain foreign intelligence agencies only two, the United States and West Germany , acknowledge the existence of their foreign intelligence organizations. France does not, the United Kingdom does not, Japan does not, Israel does not, Egypt does not, and the Soviet Union does not recognize the KGB as a foreign intelligence agency.
We also heard Moynihan complain above about the tension between secrecy and congressional oversight, while in a recent article in Intelligence & National Security , CIA staff historian Nicholas Duimovich Dujmovic) opined: "I believe that the wealth of material available on the CIA website is unique to any intelligence organization in history, in terms of its volume, volume and exposure of previously held secrets.
On the other hand, in the UK, as one academic recently reminded us, attitudes towards intelligence reflect British attitudes towards sex, that is, but to suggest that it was The existence of what was considered a pleasure was not officially confirmed until the passage of the Intelligence Services Act of 1994.
However, it is all a matter of degree, of course. The CIA's "ethos" emphasizes the inviolable status of secrecy in uncharacteristically dramatic terms: "We preserve our ability to obtain secrets by protecting our sources and methods from the moment we go to work until our last breath.
Argument: Duimovich also noted in the same article: "Intelligence historians face special challenges in understanding what history has often deliberately obscured. CIA staff historians, on the other hand, "operate primarily in the world of secrecy."
Even the "Kids Area" of the CIA website promises children that they will "see some top-secret stuff you won't find elsewhere," in other words, secrecy and differential access to information are part of the agency's existence. core part of the rationale.
References:
Paul Thompson, "Voices from the Past: Oral History"
Alessandro Portelli, "The Specificity of Oral History"
Bill Casey, "The Struggle for Freedom: Afghanistan and American Foreign Policy"
